1. Field
The following description relates to a multi-output differential gear apparatus, for example, to a multi-output differential gear apparatus which may provide three or more outputs through one input.
2. Description of Related Art
A differential gear apparatus is a gear apparatus having three or more gears that interlock and engage one another, and that when two of those gears are rotated, the remaining gear is also rotated.
In various industrial fields of wheeled equipments such as industrial machines, speed reducers, speed increasers, winches, elevators, escalators, and automobiles, various types of differential gear apparatuses are in use that change the speed of input rev counts of the main driving force through a gear ratio suitable to various applications and transmit the changed output rev count to the driving means of a driving axis.
Particularly of the aforementioned, speed increasers or speed reducers are widely used which use rotation ratios of each rotary part of epicyclic gear units that transfer a big driving force with a simple structure. In particular, various types of gear apparatuses are being developed where numerous epicyclic gear units, that is, two or three epicyclic gear units are combined in series in order to obtain high efficiency.
That is, a differential gear apparatus using epicyclic gear units consisting of a sun gear in the middle and an internal gear in an outer circumference thereof, and epicyclic gears between the sun gear and the internal gear and epicycle gear carriers connecting the epicyclic gears uses two of the three elements of the sun gear, internal gear, and epicyclic gears as an input/output axis, and connects or fixates a separate driving force control apparatus to the remaining element to change the rotating force of the output rotation axis.
However, general differential gear apparatuses using such epicyclic gear units provide only two outputs in opposite directions from each other, and thus there is a problem that three or more outputs cannot be obtained when using conventional differential gear apparatuses.
Therefore, the purpose of the present disclosure is to resolve the problems of prior art aforementioned by providing a multi-output differential gear apparatus capable of generating a plurality of outputs through a plurality of differential gear parts with one driving force received from outside.